1916
by Goldleaf83
Summary: "Death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. [I] will simply try to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war."—Erich Maria Remarque
1. Chapter 1: Klink

"Klink and his monocle are still fighting World War I."—Colonel Hogan, "The Experts"

ooOoo

 _September 25, 1916_

 _Leutnant_ Wilhelm Klink stared at the hospital ceiling, regretting the undeniable fact that his luck had not been worse.

The bullet that had pierced his chest just below his left shoulder had not permanently damaged him. Somehow, it had passed through his body without breaking bones or severing serious nerves.

How could a man be so unlucky?

The doctor who had just given him a cursory examination had absently assured him that he would regain full mobility fairly quickly—a few weeks at most. "You are fortunate. No signs of infection, so we need not worry about gangrene. Light duty first, then back to the front for you, _Leutnant_ ," he had said not five minutes ago, just before moving on to the neighboring cot without a backward glance.

Wilhelm certainly did not want infection, much less gangrene, and he was relieved there were no signs of either. To that extent, his definition of being fortunate overlapped the doctor's. But at this point in his military career, it also differed strongly.

 _Before the war, I would never have believed that being told that I would be fine after I had been shot would be bad news_ , he thought, all too aware of the despair settling within him now that he knew he would be all right.

When the bullet had struck his chest five days ago, spinning him around and slamming him down into the trench, he had thought it was all over for him. He remembered lying in the mud just afterwards, feeling a strange sense of euphoric relief despite the overwhelming pain. He no longer had to worry about being shot by the English; the worst had finally happened.

Well, no, not the worst. Even lying there in shock with his face half buried in the muck, Wilhelm had known he had been fortunate in many ways. The bullet's impact had knocked him backwards and he had fallen into the trench: a substantial fall downwards, but at least out of the line of fire. He had known he would be found and taken to a dressing station. He would be cared for, not left in _Niemandsland_ —No Man's Land—where the stretcher bearers could not reach him for hours or days as _Gefreiter_ Braun had been last week. The whole unit had suffered through his moaning and screaming in pain and thirst, out of reach, till death claimed the young soldier—though not soon enough for anyone, least of all for Braun himself. No one had been able to get a clear shot at him to end his suffering; distaste for the idea had gradually hardened to desperation among all of them to just get it done, but it had remained impossible without risking Braun's own fate.

And then a few days ago it had been Wilhelm's turn.

"Lucky dog. This'll be his _Heimatschuß_ for sure." So _Unteroffizier_ Roth had said to Krause, his fellow stretcher bearer, as they turned, gathered, and shifted Wilhelm with rough solicitude to carry him from the trench back to the _Truppenverbandplatz_ , the regimental aid post.

It was what every soldier secretly hoped for, a "homeland shot" that would injure him enough to get him evacuated from the battlefield but without getting him killed or permanently mutilated. Losing an arm or a leg or getting gassed, though, could even get you a _Heimatpaß_ , a "passport home," out of the war for good.

Was life without a limb worth it to get out of the trenches with their daily risk of death? Every soldier asked himself that at one point or another.

Wilhelm had lain there on the stretcher while its bearers squelched through the soaked trench, aware that something was very wrong with him yet somehow divorced from the chaotic world battling around him. As he had watched the spinning sky above him, he had thought his internal debate was over. He hadn't had to shoot himself to get out of the trenches: the British had finally taken the choice out of his hands.

At the time, he had felt almost grateful to them.

But now . . . it was just his rotten luck that he hadn't been hurt a little more, a little worse. His doctor had just sentenced him to return to the Somme.

 _I cannot desert_ , Wilhelm thought bleakly. _They shoot deserters. But . . . I cannot go back._

He tried to push away the memories of his most recent posting and how unbearable life had been there. Early in June he had lost his comfortable post in the Supply section where he had served since the war's beginning. He had been efficient there, commended for it even, though of course it had not been a career-advancing post. But officers were needed at the front, and he had been abruptly assigned to a unit near Thiepval, in the Somme section of Germany's western front. The first days had been generally quiet, even boring as he had worked to get to know the complex layout of trenches and his new duties.

Two weeks later all hell had broken loose.

He and his unit had held out, holed up in a deep _Stollen_ , throughout the days and nights of constant bombardment by the British that had started off the Battle of the Somme near the end of June. His dugout, like most of the ones that the Germans had constructed in the high ground along the Somme front, was deep—nearly six meters for this one. It had proved impermeable to destruction from the mortars, but the shaking and noise as literally thousands of shells had screamed overhead and exploded nearby, hour after hour and day after day, had nearly driven him mad. Nor was he alone in his reaction: the men who served under him suffered just as much … as did other creatures that haunted their safe haven. Wilhelm was sure he would never forget how one night the endless, relentless bombardment had goaded even the rats that infested the trenches and dugouts into hysteria—the only time Klink had ever felt anything approaching fellow feeling for the revolting creatures that fed on the dead and tried their luck with the living in the trenches.

At 0720 on the morning of the first day of July came a horrendous explosion: a mine, and a big one, Klink was certain, to the north, near Beaumont Hamel. Eight minutes later came another, far worse—from the south by La Boiselle. Though clearly still some distance away, it was the nonetheless loudest percussion Klink had ever heard or felt, and the tremendous shock knocked him and his whole unit off their feet if they were standing, off their seats if they were sitting. At that moment Klink knew with a sinking heart that the mines must have been powerful beyond previous measure.

How many of his fellow officers and their men had just died?

And then—a sudden pause in the bombardment. They all knew what that meant: the enemy was attacking, going over the top of their own trenches and coming hell-bent for the German trenches.

Klink's captain had ordered the men out of the dugout. Shaking from the days of bombing, they came blinking into the smoky morning daylight, moving as fast as they could to get their machine guns set up and at the ready, knowing their lives depended on it. Setting the legs of the guns slightly in front of the trench gave the soldiers manning them a full view of the battlefield in front of them. Klink had been proud of the men of his unit: the gunners had worked efficiently, getting the machine guns set up just in time to watch as hundreds of enemy soldiers—British, not French, here on the Somme—raced towards them across the putrid bone-littered wasteland of mud and shell holes and blasted tree stumps that separated the opposing sets of trenches by 200-odd meters.

Smoke had obscured visibility in places, but glints of watery sunlight on tin helmets gave cues until the wind cleared the view, not to mention the shouts of men urging themselves and their fellow soldiers onward. Klink had relayed the expected orders, and as a result his gunners had mowed the British down in an ongoing hail of bullets:

First by the dozen.

Then in scores.

Finally in hundreds.

Wave after wave of men came rushing up the slope towards them. Almost none survived to make it all the way across No Man's Land.

At the time he had wondered, _why don't they stop? They see what we have done to their comrades. This is suicide. Why don't they stop? Please, Mein Gott, make them stop!_

But of course he knew why they did not. Their senior officers had ordered them to keep going, their lieutenants, men like himself, had led the way into the slaughter, even as they were being massacred. All those men knew that to stay in the trenches was to brand themselves as cowards and risk execution by court martial. They were dead either way, but going over the top of the trenches at least allowed them to fool themselves into believing they were in control of their fate, made them feel soldierly, powerful, honorable, patriotic.

Even if it was all a waste.

And now, two months later, Klink finally had gotten his _Heimatschuß_ , courtesy of the British. But, unfortunately, only for a brief time.

 _Hauptmann_ Kühn, in the cot on his left, shifted restlessly. Wilhelm turned to look at him covertly. He usually tried not to look: the blank space under the blanket, where Kühn's leg was supposed to be, made him uncomfortable. Kühn caught the look this time.

"So, a _Heimatpaß_ for me, but back to the front for you, eh _Leutnant_? And which of us is the more fortunate?" he asked drily.

Wilhelm shook his head, unsure of the answer. He thought of Ella, his fiancée. He considered her so at any rate, even if her parents had forbidden an official engagement between them until the war was over. She had privately promised herself to him, though. She was his—she would be his. But he couldn't help wondering, if he were in Kühn's shoes—well, shoe—would she still want him, if he were not whole?

"At least I don't need a right leg to be an accountant," Kühn continued. "And I was never keen on dancing, even with my wife. What about you? What will you do after the war, Klink?"

 _After the war_. A fairy tale time. A happily ever after—if one survived to see it. In her last letter to him, Ella had likened herself to Briar Rose from the Grimms' tale: waiting, fenced in her tower, for Wilhelm to come claim her with a kiss on the day the war ended. Given his experiences on the Western Front, Wilhelm feared he was more likely to be like the princes who stuck fast and died in the thicket surrounding the castle, never to reach the immured princess.

Not that he would ever say so to Ella, of course. A man had to play the prince, after all.

"What will you be as a civilian?" Kühn asked, unknowingly poking at the sore spot in Wilhelm's psyche.

"Nothing," Wilhelm answered, recalling bitterly how, after Gymnasium, he had failed the exams for university to study law or medicine. His family's disappointment had been deep. Wilhelm himself had been left wondering if he would have to join his father in his store—until his Uncle Klaus the barber had persuaded his best customer, the mayor of the city of Potsdam, to find a place for his nephew at the military academy in that town.

But there was no need to tell Kühn any of that, though of course it was nothing to be ashamed of. After all, to get ahead everyone used whatever connections they had. But no need to advertise it either.

"I was a cadet at Potsdam. My family intends for me to have a military career." Wilhelm made his voice prideful, however much he might cower inwardly now at the prospect of such a life.

Granted, he had been proud to put on his cadet uniform, swaggering in it for his mother, sister, and Ella. Once at the military academy, though, he had struggled with the course of study, especially weak in the courses on strategy and tactics. Statistics and accounting he could manage well, but the more complicated mathematics required in other courses defeated him. His ability to get his work in on time had counted in his favor, even if its quality had not always matched his classmates'. But though he had finished 95th in his class (a fact he kept hidden from his family), he had at least graduated. Not all the men in his class had, a fact he reminded himself of when the sting of that placement needed soothing. He had at least completed his coursework, passed his exams, and earned his commission.

His mother and sister and Ella had cooed even more over his officer's uniform, much to his pleasure, when he returned home on leave afterwards.

He had spent a long time making sure that it fit him just so, his tie straight, his buttons polished, hair combed, his _pickelhaube_ set at just the right angle: everything completely correct to make a good impression. He knew himself to be a fastidious man: that was a virtue in a German officer whose outward polish should mirror his inward efficiency.

That was one reason the front at the Somme was so awful: finding water to wash and shave with was often nearly impossible. He detested being dirty and unkempt for days on end until his unit was rotated to the rear lines for rest, hated the days when combing the mud out of his hair was the best he could do in terms of personal grooming, loathed living in filth until it was hard to tell where the muck stopped and he started.

Wilhelm had liked the order and discipline of the academy: he had liked knowing where he was expected to be and what he was expected to do each hour of each day. Life as an officer had looked good to him back then: a clean and ordered life.

Even when war broke out, shortly after his graduation from Potsdam, he had not worried. He could even remember being pleased at the prospect. War was a boon for his career. It would provide opportunities for military advancement; his mediocre academic record at the academy would be forgotten as he led the men under his command to glorious victory over the Entente powers of Britain, France, and Russia that surrounded and threatened his Fatherland and its Austro-Hungarian ally. And besides, everyone knew the British, French, and Russians would quickly retreat and the war would be short and soon finished.

Well, two grinding years of trench warfare had disillusioned everyone with that. Over a dozen of his classmates from his year at the academy were dead, including two close friends, Ernst and Otto. Ernst had been killed at Ypres when shrapnel tore through his boiled leather _pickelhaube_. The new standard steel helmet, the _Stahlhelm_ , gradually replacing the traditional but ineffective _pickelhaube_ , had not protected Otto from being shot in the chest in hand-to-hand combat by French soldiers who had gotten into the trench he was defending at Verdun. Walter at least was alive, but badly lung-damaged from gas. Fortunately Rudy, Hans, and Hansy were still alive—at least he hoped they were. All Western Front soldiers from either side knew that such hopes might last only until the next set of letters arrived.

The German losses at Verdun since February and in the Somme since July had been terrible. General Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the German General Staff, demanded that German soldiers must retake any lost ground "by immediate counter-attack, even to the use of the last man." General Fritz von Below, in command at the Somme, similarly required that "the enemy should have to carve his way over heaps of corpses."

Klink's classmates were forming that pile of bodies.

He had very nearly become part of it. And now he was going to have to go back to the battle.

Back to the tormented riven earth, split by trenches and ripped by shells, to muck that stank from the putrefying remnants of dead men mixed into it, to uniforms contaminated beyond cleaning by it, to filth and lice and the constant ear-splitting roar of guns. To watching men torn apart by metal, dying—or not dying when they should. Back to wondering minute by minute if each moment would be his last; to being torn between fear and almost hope that it would be. Back to the weird mirrorworld of the trenches, where the dead rotted unburied in the light on the world's surface and the living crouched rotting in dark grave-deep holes below it.

Back to the front meant for Wilhelm meant going back to worrying over how to command men, being terrified daily that his Hauptmann would be killed and that he himself would have to step into his place. Giving orders on the parade ground was all very well, but in the midst of battle when men died because of what he ordered. . . .

Wilhelm shrank from the idea of returning to chaos, leaving behind the daily order and cleanliness of military life behind the lines.

It also meant going back to wondering daily if he still had any courage—or if he had ever had any.

But of course, he still wondered that here in the safety of the hospital.

He sighed deeply.

"Not keen on returning to the front, eh, _Herr_ Career Officer?" Kühn eyed him speculatively.

The question was a trap, Klink knew. No sane man wanted to return to the Somme. But one could hardly say so to a fellow officer who outranked him, even one with only one leg.

"I will of course do my duty to the Fatherland," he answered conventionally, staring at the ceiling.

It wasn't like he had any choice.

"Well," Kühn drawled, "if I still had my leg, I'd volunteer for duty that would get me out of the trenches."

Klink turned his head quickly to the left. "What sort of duty would that be?" He tried to sound casual, to tamp down the eagerness in his voice. He was fairly sure he had not succeeded, however.

"You could volunteer for the _Luftstreitkräfte_."

Klink twisted his head back straight to stare at the ceiling once more. The air forces? They were so new: airplanes had only existed for just over a dozen years. His vision of military service had never encompassed such a thing.

Yet he knew that both sides of the conflict had used airplanes to gather intelligence since the early days of the war—and now they were even used as weapons. Klink had seen both German and French planes in the air over the trenches and one time had authorized his men to shoot at a British plane, though they had missed. He had heard of Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke, Germany's aces, the great pilots of the Fokker Scourge the previous summer and winners of the _Pour le Mérite_ , Germany's highest military honor. And they were gentlemen: the story went that Immelmann had shot down a British airman behind German lines, landed his own craft safely, shook hands with the enemy, informed him that he was a prisoner, then helped him out of the wreckage of his plane and rendered first aid.

It all seemed very civilized, particularly in contrast with the barbarity of the trenches.

Yes, he thought. I would far rather do that. I may still die, but I can do so in a clean uniform.

"How do I get such a transfer?" he asked Kühn.

"Lots of fellows volunteer. It helps to have a friend in the right places."

Wilhelm felt his fledgling hopes sink. "I know no one in the _Luftstreitkräfte_."

"Ah, but I do. I could speak to him." Kühn's voice held a sly note of self-satisfaction.

Klink turned and raised himself on his left arm, ignoring the pain of his wound. "You would do that for me? Why?"

"I have cheated death in the trenches. Why shouldn't you?" Kühn fell silent for a moment. "I could not save my _leutnant_ from his fate at Verdun. He asphyxiated in the mud." He paused again and Wilhelm looked down at the floor. That must have been a terrible death.

Kühn continued, "But I would do what I could to save another from his fate." He hesitated, then added, "It's not necessarily saving your life, _Leutnant_ Klink. Casualties among pilots and even observers are high."

Klink laid back down, nodding. _Oberleutnant_ Immelmann, famous among even the best pilots, had died less than three months ago, shot down by a British pilot. He had been given a state funeral.

Wilhelm knew that he could not guarantee his own survival in this war. No soldier on the Western front could do that.

But he might buy himself time.

And if worst came to worst, he could at least die as a hero flaming out quickly in clean air instead of drowning in the unholy muck of the trenches of the Somme.

ooOoo

 _ **Author's Notes:**_

This story is inspired by the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme this year: 1916 – 2016. I started it on July 1, 2016, the anniversary of when the battle officially started (though one might argue it began a few days earlier). Klink's memory of that day is written in memory and honor of the British casualties, almost twenty thousand of whom that died that day and nearly forty thousand of whom were wounded, as well as the estimated ten to twelve thousand German casualties. The anniversary of the Somme is ongoing, as the battle did not end until November 18. Over a million men died between the two sides in those five months.

The two German main characters of _Hogan's Heroes_ were both of the generation that suffered through World War I and its horrific attrition, so exploring how their experiences in that war might have made them the men they became by the second war seemed like an interesting idea.

Erich Maria Remarque's foreword to his novel _All Quiet on the Western Front_ seems apt here: "This book is to be neither an accusation, nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will simply try to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war."

Parts of my story, including Klink's desire to get out of the trenches and method for doing so, were inspired by the play _Billy Bishop Goes to War_ , about the famous World War I Canadian ace. I saw it many years ago, and parts of it have always stuck with me.

Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke were indeed famous aces; the story about Immelman's downing Lieutenant William Reid of the R.A.F. in July 1915, taking him captive and shaking hands with him, is a true one. On June 18, 1916, after achieving his 16th and 17th "victory claims" (shooting down enemy aircraft) in two separate dogfights that day, _Oberleutnant_ Immelman was shot down and killed by an R.A.F. plane piloted by Second Lieutenant G.R. McCubbin with Corporal J. H. Waller as gunner/observer.

Klink's fiancée, Ella, is an OC from Chapter 12 of my story "Daily Life at Stalag 13." His failure at university exams comes from "Kommandant of the Year" (Season 1, Episode 3); his position as cadet at Potsdam, graduating 95th in his class, is from the episode "Hogan's Double Life" (Season 6, Episode 22). Klink's dead and maimed classmates are my invention, though they would have had plenty of real-life parallels. Rudy, Hans, and Hans, the survivors, derive from various episodes of the television series. Rudy is General Rudolf von Lintzer from "Klink's Rocket." Hans is Major Hans Kronman, who tries to enlist Klink to assassinate Hitler and gets shot by the Gestapo in "The Safecracker Suite." "Hansy" is General Hans Stofle, from the episode "Hello, Zollie": Klink refers to him by the nickname "Hansy" in it.

 _ **German vocabulary:**_ I have very little background in German, but sprinkling it through seemed a useful technique as a reminder of the perspective of the protagonist. All are based on research; any mistakes are my own.

 _Heimatschuß_ : "Homeland shot: a wound sufficiently disabling that a soldier would have to recuperate off the battlefield. The equivalent of the British "Blighty wound."

 _Heimatpaß_ : "Passport home." A would so bad that the soldier would be removed from active service—at least at the front. This is the term that Erich Maria Remarque uses in _All Quiet on the Western Front_. I'm not sure, from the research I've done, if there was a true distinction in meaning in the way I've used these two terms, though the meanings suggest a varying degree of seriousness to me. From what I can tell, _Heimatschuß_ is more used; I'm not sure if that's because it was just a more common word or if there was a distinction and more men got it. The German Army of World War I was famous for its efficiency: physically damaged men might still be used in other capacities in the army so that those unhurt could take their places.

 _Gefreiter:_ Private

 _Hauptmann_ : Captain

 _Leutnant_ : Second Lieutenant

 _Oberleutnant_ : First Lieutenant

 _Luftstreitkräfte_ : German Air Force of World War I

 _Mein Gott_ _: My God_

 _Niemandsland_ : No Man's Land

 _Stollen_ : Dugout

 _Truppenverbandplatz_ : the regimental aid post, first stop in getting medical attention if wounded.


	2. Chapter 2: Schultz

Now all roads lead to France

and heavy is the tread

of the living; but the dead

returning lightly dance.

—Edward Thomas, "Roads" (1916)

ooOoo

 _September 25, 1916_

 _Gefreiter_ Hans Schultz propped his lean, six-foot frame against the sandbagged wall of the trench, smoking a cigarette. He was hungry, as he almost always was these days, but there would be no food until the dinner mess—and that was nothing to look forward to. Rations would be uninteresting at best, most likely short as well, and badly cooked as always: Schultz shared the general opinion that their mess cook would serve their cause best if he cooked for the other side. Tonight there would be sauerkraut, no doubt, and bread; maybe beans too. It would be nice to have sausages or cheese, but that was rare and Hans wasn't counting on it. Sweets were even rarer, unless someone had received a parcel from home and was willing to share.

Well, whatever the rations would be tonight, they were still at least two hours away. The taste of smoke would just have to satisfy him until then.

He stared up at the leaden sky, where the low-lying clouds hung and swirled, fogging the view just a few feet from their trench. Droplets of fog beaded his uniform; the sodden air had soaked right through, dampening all the layers right down to his skin. The clammy wet made the dry heat of the cigarette doubly welcome.

I am so tired of war, he thought for the thousandth time in the past two years.

Maybe the ten thousandth. But who was counting?

And if he hadn't reached ten thousand yet, he would eventually. The war had no end in sight.

Hans was highly aware of the irony that he had volunteered for military duty: he had enlisted as a _musketier_ at the beginning of the war. Granted, he would almost certainly have been conscripted soon had he waited, given the huge push to increase the size of the German army back in the summer of 1914. But it had seemed like an adventure at the time and the right thing to do: to serve and protect his Fatherland. So he knew that he had in some sense asked for this, and that was a decision he would always regret.

Hans had been in the fighting since the very beginning. As the German army had moved swiftly into Belgium on its way to France, he had been with the troops that laid siege to Liège in the first battle of the war. He and his comrades had expected the battle to take a mere two days—the Belgians would see that the Germans had the superior force and were simply on their way to ensure that France did not invade Germany. Belgium itself was not of particular interest: Germany simply needed passage through it to outflank the threatening French army. Eleven days of fighting later, Hans had discovered that he did not enjoy battle, though he did all he could to protect himself and his comrades and to carry out the orders they were given. _Oberleutnant_ Kammler had been in charge of the unit back then and had proved himself a good leader despite his youth: Hans and the other men learned to trust Kammler at Liège.

But that combat had been only their first. Kammler had led them in the battle of Ardennes just a few days later. That was a two-day battle, the first time they had engaged the French, and it had been a decisive victory. But Hans's memories of that battle still left a bitter taste in his mouth.

No one had really understood the new war at that point, least of all the men fighting it. Hans remembered all too well how he and his comrades had undertaken the back-breaking work of digging trenches for the very first time. They had been rudimentary, shallow structures by later war standards, but the entrenchment had provided a very welcome shelter when bullets and artillery started flying. The fighting had been fierce, but thanks to the hard marching that had gotten the German army in place, Hans and his comrades had possessed better position than the French.

Hans still remembered how he had learned to be grateful for his field gray uniform that first day of the battle, given how brilliantly the French had stood out in the forest in their bright red pantaloons and blue jackets. Full of their _élan_ _vital_ , believing that they possessed such gallantry that they would inevitably win, the French had attacked. Schultz had watched as they charged straight at the German line, rifles with bayonets pointing forward as they ran. . .

. . . straight into the machine gun fire from Hans's platoon. The blue jackets had blossomed with red to match the pantaloons as the hail of bullets mowed the Frenchmen down. "It is so easy," Kammler had muttered grimly, crouched by Hans, watching. "Like target practice, with such brightly painted bull's eyes."

At that moment, Schultz had remembered the statue of Death in the Cathedral of Trier: a skeleton with a scythe that he had seen on his one trip to the Rhineland city. He had never expected to act in that capacity himself, to take on Death's role and reap the souls of men with gunfire.

Hans still wasn't sure which he hated most: the memory of slaughtering the oncoming French for the first time, or suffering the first major loss in their unit. Near the end of the second day, as the French began to retreat, Kammler had been hit by artillery shell fragments that had pierced his leather _pickelhaub_. Recalling Kammler's head wounds, Hans reached up to touch his new steel _stahlhelm_. The polished leather _pickelhaub_ represented tradition, and Hans had thought he looked very dapper in it when his uniform was new. But after seeing so many comrades with head injuries that the leather helmets couldn't save them from, Hans was more than happy with the dark new "coal scuttle" helmets of steel that could stop bullets and shrapnel—at least some of the time. A head injury could be bad, but much better than having no head, or only half of one.

Such a helmet might have saved Kammler from injury in the Ardennes, Hans thought. He recalled how, unsure if Kammler was still alive and with no stretcher bearers nearby to help him, he had hoisted the officer on his back to carry him to get medical help. He hadn't gone more than a few steps before being knocked off his feet: a shell landed just where he had been standing not fifteen seconds earlier, throwing up earth and tearing apart a tree that just missed landing on the two of them. Kammler had been hit with yet another shrapnel fragment, in his back. It would have hit Hans if he hadn't been carrying the _Oberleutnant_.

They had both come so close to dying, so close. . . .

That was the moment when Hans fully understood that he might not survive the war, however short (or long) it might be.

Hans had succeeded in carrying Kammler behind the lines to stretcher bearers. They had pronounced the officer still alive and had taken him on to the medical aid station, and Hans had returned to the front line to rejoin their unit and watch the final French retreat. Kammler had never returned. Hans had heard that it had taken six months for their _Oberleutnant_ to recover from his injuries, and then he had been assigned other duties.

In the two years since then, their unit had moved around the western front, part of the "living wall" that protected the Fatherland from the would-be Entente invaders. Here above the Somme River, Schultz and his comrades had dug more trenches, deeper trenches, dugouts far deeper that were reinforced with sandbags and even iron beams at times; they had lined the trenches with logs from trees they had chopped down from French forests, floored them with duckboards, and had strung cables for communications and wires for electricity.

And many, many times, they had manned the machine guns and protected their lines from the oncoming French. Eventually from the British too, who had been so willing to go on violent offensives that had destroyed the French villages that the Germans had defended. Hans had been proud to know that his side had taken the villagers behind the lines to safety from the ferocious British assaults on them and had even helped repair damaged houses and buildings when the fighting died down.

It was the British on the other side of _Niemandsland_ here in the Somme now. Hans grimly acknowledged the appropriateness of the nickname with which someone had christened the strip of land between the opposing trenches: no man who valued his life ventured into that strip of land if he could possibly help it. Trees, greenery, fields: anything once living there had long since been blasted away by shells, particularly since the battle had started in full force here at the end of June. Churned-up mud, shell holes filled with stagnant water, line after tangled line of barbed wire, some of it horribly decorated with the bits of men that had tried getting across it in earlier attacks. Sometimes men from one side or the other, those who no longer valued their lives, climbed over the trenches into No Man's Land, counting on the snipers and gunners from the other side to end their suffering.

It worked, and then they were no longer men. Just corpses, to add to the ever-growing heap.

Just under two hundred meters separated the two sides of No Man's Land at this point of the front, so it was possible to hear the British from time to time, when the guns were quiet, when they sang in the evenings, bored in their trenches, or when orders were shouted for morning inspection. _Unteroffizer_ Steuben had worked in London before the war, so he knew English and could translate what was said. He even sometimes shouted back taunts and suggestions at the opposing troops, egged on by all his fellow _Landsers_ here in the German side. It could provide quite good entertainment. Hans had even been picking up some English from Steuben: he liked the sound of the words, their feel in his mouth as he spoke them. Some of them were even quite close to some German words, as though the languages were cousins in some way. Like the Kaiser and the English king. . . .

Sometimes orders required expeditions into No Man's Land: twice Hans had been put on teams to reconnoiter the landscape and gain intelligence on the British positions after heavy bombardments designed to drive the British back. Both missions had been at night, hiding their crossing from any snipers. Hans had survived both of those dangerous raids and considered himself lucky. The two glimpses of the temporarily abandoned British trenches had also given him an appreciation of the solid building of his own trench: having entrenched first, his side had the high ground, whereas the British trenches lay lower and had far more watery muck in them than his own. The water there had been stagnant, foul-smelling, as though it had never dried since the war began. Remembering that horrible British trench, Hans patted the moist but sturdy wood- and sandbag-reinforced wall of his own trench, not regretting the days of back-breaking labor it had taken to construct it—and reconstruct it at times when it had gotten hit by shells. It had filled ankle-high with water over the duckboards a few times when it had rained long and hard, of course—and this year had been very wet—but because it was on high ground it would dry and drain eventually. The last area Hans had been posted in had not had a wood duckboard "floor" for the trench to keep them dry, so Hans was grateful for this one. Soaked boots and wet feet were the curse of any soldier spending his rotation of days in the trenches. No man wanted to have the flesh of his feet literally rot off his bones.

The other times Hans had crossed into No Man's Land had been during the rare, brief, informal ceasefires that had allowed men from both sides to gather the remains of the dead. Hans had undertaken that sad, grim, ghastly task with a heavy heart each time—but the one thing worse than grave duty was leaving the bodies (or the parts of bodies) to putrefy without burial, simmering the water of No Man's Land into a horrid soup of nauseating stench.

Just once, Hans recalled, the trip into No Man's Land had been different. That was early on, a day that stood apart from all others: December 25, 1914. Though really, it had started the day before: on Christmas Eve they had shared sweets and even lit the candles on some little pine trees sent as gifts, as _Weihnachtsbaum_. While they were singing their carols, the English had sung back from the other side of No Man's Land, and they had traded songs back and forth for the evening. The next morning their officer back then—what was his name? Ah, _Leutnant_ Fromm, that was it. Fromm had made a truce with the English to gather the bodies in their section of No Man's Land, to give them proper burial. During that sad duty, Hans had struck up a kind of conversation with an English soldier, as best they could given the language difference between them. They had shared sweets, showed each other pictures, and eventually been joined by the other men on both sides, as a kind of camaraderie grew. They were all cold and tired, and lonesome for home and family and a real Christmas. One very young German soldier, Gutermuth, who was a pet of everyone in Hans's unit, had even mischievously gotten out a make-shift football. They had kicked it around a little between themselves and even with the English soldiers, though the shell-pocked landscape made playing an actual game impossible. As twilight drew near, the English officer had saluted Fromm and taken his men back down to their trench, and Hans and his comrades had gone back to theirs. But the truce had held through the rest of the day, and there was little shooting from either side for a few days afterwards.

Then their unit had been rotated to the back lines for a rest, and when they were sent back to the front line trenches it was to a different area. Word had percolated through their unit that orders had come down from the upper levels that no truce was to be allowed again. Hans had needed no explanation: he intuitively understood why. He had even been relieved that they had been sent elsewhere. He did not want to shoot the Englishmen whose hands he had shaken and whose children and wives and sweethearts he had seen pictures of. Knowing who was on the other side of a gun sight made pulling the trigger nearly impossible.

Not that any Christmas truce was likely at this point in the war. Anger and hatred ran deep on each side for all they had suffered at the other's hands. Hans had seen his comrades maimed with horrendous wounds, had seen them die—or not die, which could be even worse at times. Many of his original comrades were no longer with him, having been shuffled out through injuries, death, or occasional promotions. Most of those that remained were hardened and bitter, hating the English and the French who had slain and maimed their friends. Hans himself was long past caring enough to hate. He remembered the boys he had met nearly two years ago. They had not been evil. They probably hated him by this point: they had suffered the same kinds of losses—or even worse, since Germany had begun to employ gas against its enemies last year. Of course the English were retaliating now, using gas against the Germans. Hans just wanted it all to end. Life in the trenches was no adventure, and he wanted to go home and live in peace, away from the roar and danger of the battlefront.

He had no hope of that. Hans sighed and took another drag on his cigarette, drawing the smoke deep in his lungs and swirling the smoke around in his mouth. It tasted good, smelled good: the sharp acrid tobacco momentarily covered over the rotting stink of the battlefield, giving him a fleeting break from the omnipresent reek. Somehow the fog seemed to amplify the smells just as much as it made all surfaces slippery.

A sudden volley of shots broke out, with shouts and screams. A raid! Hans jerked his head to the right, coming fully alert: he was certain the fray was just a few turns down the trench. He swiftly stubbed out and pocketed the remaining half of his cigarette, simultaneously grabbing his rifle. Maurer materialized out of the fog, coming up from their dugout, rifle also at the ready, with _Leutnant_ Esser shouldering past him, pistol drawn, to take point. The three of them took the first two turns of the firebays and traverses fast, then slowed, checking carefully around each corner, ready to give each other covering fire if English invaders had overcome the guards. As they crept silently down the trench corridor to the next dogleg turn, Hans could hear groans and pants ahead of them: probably the struggle had happened just around the next corner. Listening, Hans was seized with anger: it was daylight! Raids happened under the cover of night; one expected them then and was on guard for them. Today the fog must have emboldened the English into thinking they could spy under its cover.

Esser signaled Hans and Maurer: they would all move on the count of three. Hans watched Esser's hand, his own guts tightly coiled, clenching his rifle tightly. Would this be the day he had long feared, when English bullets would find their final home by burying themselves in his body?

Esser held up one finger: _Eins . . . zwei . . . **drei**!_ They burst round the corner—and found a tableau of three men, with only one man conscious: a British officer kneeling over a fellow British soldier. One German soldier—Schultz recognized him as Kalb, who was new to the unit—lay against the wall of the trench, bleeding from two wounds, one in his right arm, the other his right leg.

The officer looked at them and drew in his breath sharply, then carefully rocked back on his haunches and raised his hands just as Esser snarled, " _Hände hoch!_ " The Englishman dropped his pistol, which thwapped into the chalky mud of the firestep by his knees.

Esser ordered him to stand and step back, gesturing with his pistol. The English officer obeyed, not taking his eyes off them.

"Schultz, search him; get whatever weapons he has!" Esser ordered.

Hans moved forward with care, fully aware that Esser and Maurer were covering the English officer and therefore doing all he could to not block their aim. He did not wish to become a hostage or a shield for the enemy officer—who, he couldn't help noticing, was quite young, in his early twenties, even younger than himself. The officer remained still as Hans checked for other weapons. He found a knife and confiscated that, then picked up the mud-caked pistol from the ledge. He bent down to check the English soldier on the ground, then looked up at the man's officer, shaking his head. The officer took a deep breath and released it, raising his chin slightly. But Hans thought he saw the man's jaw tremble slightly. This was no trivial loss for him.

"Good," Hans thought. "At least this is an officer who values his men's lives."

"Schultz, go get aid for Kalb," Esser ordered next, his aim steady and his eyes hard. "Maurer and I will keep an eye on this fellow."

ooOoo

Two hours later, Hans Schultz watched as the English officer ate a plate of sauerkraut and bread down in their dugout. The dinner had been as bad as Hans had feared, and the English officer didn't seem to find it any more appetizing than Hans did, although they had both cleaned their plates of course. Maurer had taken the dishes away, and Hans was momentarily alone with the prisoner, though Nussbaum was on guard at the top of the exit to the trench. Esser was outside conferring with Steuben, who had served as translator in the initial interrogation of the prisoner.

Hans studied the officer, who seemed at this point quite cool and relaxed. He had a long face with the mustache that officers on both sides seemed to favor, and fair hair that was parted just off center, on the left side.

The officer seemed to be studying him as well. " _What is your name?_ " he asked, in English.

"Name": that was a word Hans knew from Steuben's informal English lessons. Who better to practice his rudimentary English on than this man?

" _Gefreiter_ Schultz," he answered, tapping his chest to ensure the officer understood.

The officer smiled briefly. "I am Captain Fisher. Er, according to your translator, ' _Hauptmann_ ' Fisher."

" _Fischer_?" Hans inquired, miming putting bait on a hook and casting a rod.

Fisher laughed. " _Yes. I mean, 'ja_ '." He reached for his pocket and Hans abruptly sat up, alert. But Fisher did nothing more alarming than pull out a twisted paper. " _You provided dinner. It is only polite that I provide the dessert_ ," Fisher said, unwrapping the paper and holding out the contents.

That was more English than Hans could follow, but it was easy enough to see what Fisher was offering: licorice! It was tempting . . . but could it be poisoned? Fisher did not look like a poisoner—but then what did a poisoner look like?

Fisher apparently understood the skeptical look on Hans's face. " _It's safe. I say, you pick the piece you want me to eat, and then you can choose whichever one you want_." While Hans only picked out a few of the words, the hand gestures that accompanied the speech made the meaning clear enough. Guardedly, Hans picked out one piece at random and offered it to the officer, who took it and popped it into his mouth. Hans watched for a moment. An anise odor rose up to his nostrils from the sugared stickiness on his hand. Finally, he reached and took one of the treats for himself. He carefully set the soft chewy piece into his mouth, and in just a moment savored the dark spicy flavor that tasted of boyhood and home.

He looked up to find the English officer smiling at him in satisfaction. " _Thank you_ ," Hans said carefully, returning the smile.

The officer's eyebrows arched. " _You're welcome_ ," he said, retwisting the paper then sliding it over toward Hans. " _Keep the rest. So, you speak English?_ "

" _I talk—speak?—English . . . a little?_ " Hans answered haltingly, summoning each word with difficulty. He held up his hand with his finger and thumb just a minute space apart.

" _Better than my German_ ," laughed the officer. "N _ow if you knew Latin, we could have a real conversation. I could make old Powles proud, using all that Latin he drummed into my head at Eton. Or French, of course. But I'm afraid I sadly neglected German_."

All that was far beyond Hans, although he tried to look intelligent, as though he understood what Fisher was saying.

" _Given how today has gone, I suppose I should have practiced more at games. Rugby at least—that gets you down in the mud. I was better at cross country races. Though perhaps the best preparation would have been playing hide-and-go-seek with my little brother. He sent me a letter yesterday. He's hoping the war will last another two years, so he'll be able to get in it. Can't say I share that hope for him. Seems to me that the past two years have been plenty. No end in sight, though, for you or for me, eh, Schultz? Here, would you like to see his photograph?_ "

Hans had missed most of this as well: Englishmen seemed to speak very quickly. But he had picked out "brother" and "letter" and "photograph," so he nodded. Fisher pulled out a well-worn leather wallet from inside his jacket pocket and plucked out two photographs that he slid across the table to Hans. Picking them up, Hans saw in the top picture a younger version of the man across from him, with a still younger boy next to him. The second was a picture of a young woman in a white lace dress, with dark eyes and a cloud of dark hair wreathed with flowers, as though for a ball.

" _Sister?_ " Hans hazarded. Another easy word to remember, so close to _schwester_.

" _No! Nein!_ " Fisher choked with laughter. " _My fiancée—my sweetheart_."

" _She is . . . pretty?_ " Hans remembered how the men of his unit had made Steuben teach them one evening all the English words they would need to court English girls. The chances of meeting any had seemed small, but they had all laughingly agreed that it was good to be prepared for such encounters in any language.

" _Yes, very pretty. We met at a ball three years ago_."

Hans's brow furrowed. _A ball_ . . . " _Einem Ball_?"

" _Yes—a dance. You know, to waltz? You must know 'The Blue Danube'?_ " Fisher put his arms out as though holding a young lady dance partner and swayed in his seat, humming a few notes of " _An der Schönen Blauen Donaum_ ," the first four notes low and slow, followed by two higher pairs of half notes: "Laa laa laa laa, la la! La la!"

Hans chuckled and nodded. He handed both photographs back to Fisher, who held them both for a moment, his eyes soft, before he put them away in his wallet and back in his jacket pocket.

" _You are—luck_ ," Hans told him.

" _Lucky_ ," Fisher corrected him, stressing the last syllable but shaking his head. " _I certainly thought so up till about two hours ago. Now . . . I'm not so sure_."

Unsure what to make of that set of words, Hans settled for nodding again. Just then they heard Esser and Steuben coming back down into the dugout. Fisher pushed the paper of licorice, still on the table between them, still closer to Hans, who pocketed it after only a momentary hesitation. As the officer and translator entered, Fisher looked up at them, then he and Hans rose to their feet as they saluted the English officer, and he returned their salute.

" _We will escort you to the rear guard support trenches_ ," Steuben said, in English. He turned to lead the way, and Esser gestured to Fisher to follow.

Fisher looked at Hans. " _Good luck to you, Gefreiter Schultz_ ," he said, looking directly into Hans's eyes, then he turned and followed Steuben up the steps to the trench. Hans picked up his rifle and followed Esser, emerging into the dark of night. A fine mist was falling; it was not quite rain but more than fog. Hans slid slightly leftwards on the wet duckboards. He could hear the whine and boom of artillery a mile or two down the line, but their section was quiet. No doubt Fisher's comrades and commanders on the other side of No Man's Land were wondering what had become of him and his subordinate and their mission, holding their fire to give him any chance they could.

Fisher had halted, looking up at the sky, though there was nothing to see: the weeping sky hid the stars and the moon. All was darkness, except for the small lantern, covered on three sides, that Steuben held low to light their feet.

Abruptly, Fisher lashed out, dashing the lamp to the soaked ground. It went out, leaving them in darkness. Hans heard what sounded like boots hitting flesh, and grunts, then Esser fell back against him, both of them tumbling down onto the duckboards.

"Get him!" Esser roared, pushing himself back up and off Hans. He drew his flare gun and shot it into the air. The flare whistled upward, brilliantly illuminating the night around them. Hans blinked twice to adjust his eyesight and saw Fisher's boot heels just disappearing over the sandbags of the parapet into No Man's Land.

Hans picked himself up just as Maurer came charging down the communication trench, rifle in hand. Steuben was still on the ground.

"Maurer! Schultz! Shoot him! We cannot let him return to the English trenches with whatever information he has gleaned!" Esser hissed.

Hans and Maurer mounted the firestep. They weren't by the machine gun nest with its extra protection, which meant they had to be careful or they themselves would be picked off by enemy snipers. Maurer, their most experienced sniper, knew how to be careful. On the other hand, those same enemy snipers would be trying to avoid shooting Fisher, wanting to give him his best chance to work his way across the foul pits and mire of No Man's Land and back to his own trench and comrades. Hans carefully set his rifle, unable to avoid breathing in through his mouth and nose the foul smell of the chalky mud that covered the sandbags it rested on.

"Kill him! Or we're done for!" Esser snarled.

The flare had faded, and it had spoiled Hans's night vision. He heard Esser snap orders to Steuben, who was back on his feet, to get a message to the artillery for a light flare rocket. Steuben's uneven footsteps retreated—clearly he was limping. Esser cursed the delay, then he loaded another charge in his flare gun and sent it up.

Surveying the territory in front of him, Hans saw nothing in the brief ten seconds of light. Could Fisher already have gotten away? How could he have gotten through the tangle of barbed wire?

"Look left," Maurer murmured. "He'll make for wherever they cut through this afternoon."

Of course he would. But would he be able to find it in the dark?

Hans realized that he was hoping the English officer would make it away from them. He wanted Fisher to go home to his little brother, to marry his lovely fiancée. And yet. . . .

If Fisher made it back to his lines, what chance would Hans himself have of ever seeing his own family or finding a pretty girl for himself?

A large bang and whistle announced that Steuben had gotten his message through. The star shell burst into flame and, suspended on its parachute, lit up No Man's Land like a strangely colored miniature sun. But still, as Schultz scanned the area, he couldn't see what he was looking for.

"There!" Esser said. He had gotten up on the firestep right behind Schultz and Maurer, and he thrust his arm between them, pointing. Squinting, Schultz could make out Fisher's figure, covered with mud, just beyond the tangle of barbed wire, working his way forward toward his own lines on his belly.

"Fire!" Esser ordered.

Schultz did not dare disobey but he lifted the nose of his gun ever so slightly. His rifle and Maurer's exploded almost simultaneously.

To his amazement, Fisher stood up and began to run, an uneven lope that was hard to track.

"Damn it! Shoot him! Kill him!" Esser yelled in their ears.

Did he dare miss again? Schultz heard Maurer's rifle fire as he closed his eyes and pulled his own trigger, feeling the recoil of the gun into his shoulder.

He opened his eyes immediately. In the weird light of the floating flare he could see Fisher still on his feet as he pirouetted once, took two swaying steps, then twirled one last time before falling face forward. The muck splattered and made a sickening sucking gurgle. Then silence. The light hung on, slowly descending, but nothing moved in No Man's Land.

Schultz tried to wipe sweat from his upper lip, but only succeeded in spreading the reeking mud across his mouth. He licked his lips by mistake then tried to spit the filthy taste out, but the muddy film lingered on his tongue. Maurer climbed down to the duckboards. He tugged on Schultz's jacket, and Schultz followed suit.

"Good shooting," Esser said to them, releasing a pent-up breath. He turned and walked toward their dugout. Schultz and Maurer trudged behind him.

But once at the door, Schultz sat down on the firestep rather than follow them inside. He thought of the photographs in Fisher's pocket, the fetid muck of No Man's Land gradually leaching in and drowning the images of the handsome officer, the young boy and the beautiful girl. The taste of the tainted mud was still unbearably foul in his mouth. Wiping his hand on his jacket, Schultz slipped his hand in his own pocket and felt there the twisted paper of licorice. Mechanically he drew it out, selected a piece, and bit into the spicy sweet black candy. He held it in his mouth, sucking hard on it, trying to let the taste fill him, to wipe out everything else.

 _Did I kill him?_ he wondered. _Or was it Maurer? Or does it matter?_ He shut his eyes once again, but all he could see was Fisher doing his strange waltz with Death.

Schultz shook his head to clear it. "I see nothing," he whispered to himself. "Nothing."

ooOoo

 _Author's Notes:_

 _I put a lot of research into this one. In case you're interested, here are some of the historical and cultural points on which I based Schultz's point of view, arranged to follow the story's order:_

1\. The epigraph is from "Roads," a poem by Edward Thomas. He was an English poet whose work flowered during his friendship with Robert Frost, who was living in Thomas's village in England in 1914. The two became close friends, taking many walks together. Thomas debated whether to volunteer for the war (he was well over draft age) or go to America. Frost, who had returned to the U.S., wrote his famous poem "The Road Not Taken" (1916) partly as a gentle teasing response to Thomas's inability to choose paths on their walks. Thomas ultimately chose to enlist and wrote "Roads" as a response to Frost. He was killed in action on Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, aged 39, shortly after his arrival in France; his body is buried there. His last book of poems was published in October of that year: it was dedicated to Robert Frost. In 1985, together with fifteen other Great War Poets including Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas was commemorated on a stone in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.

2\. If you Google "the statue of Death in the Cathedral of Trier," you can see an image of the statue that Schultz refers to.

3\. Schultz's first commander, _Oberleutnant_ Kammler, is a reference to the episode "The Rise and Fall of Sergeant Schultz" (Season 2, Episode 6). Promoted to general in World War II, Kammler comes to Stalag 13 and credits Schultz with saving his life when they were young soldiers, naming Liège and Ardennes as the battles in World War I when they served together. Reviewing the history, I discovered that those were the first battles of the war, which in turn means that Schultz was in the German army from the very beginning of the conflict. The city of Liège, in Belgium, was the site of the very first battle of the war, starting August 5, 1914, as the Germans tried to pass through Belgium to outflank the French; the Germans won the battle and occupied the city for the rest of the war, but the eleven days of strong Belgian resistance slowed them enough that their plans for invading France were seriously compromised. The Battle of Ardennes (August 21-23, 1914) was also a victory for Germany, though a costly one. But it cost the French more, as described in the story: although they fought fiercely, French casualties were much higher in most places and the battle ended in their retreat.

4\. The _pickelhaub_ on Klink's desk with its distinctive spike (so familiar to viewers of _Hogan's Heroes_ ) was not reserved just for officers as I had originally thought: it was the standard helmet design for all ranks of the German army, in use from 1895 until 1916. In some versions the spike could be replaced with plumes for full dress occasions; some artillery units had a ball instead of a spike. In the field during the first two years of the war, the shiny leather helmet was usually covered with a fitted cloth for camouflage. The spike proved to be dangerous in the trenches, offering a target for enemy snipers. The boiled leather offered little protection from shrapnel and bullets: large numbers of deaths from head injuries as a result of artillery fire prompted the armies of all nations involved to shift to steel helmets. In 1916, the Germans adopted the steel _stahlhelm_ with its distinctive "coal scuttle" shape. It was so successful that the design was retained through World War II: the helmets Schultz and the other guards at Stalag 13 wear are all minor variants of this World War I type.

5\. Schultz's view of the role of the German army as simply defending Germany—and the French civilians caught behind its lines too—would have been typical of the thinking of most German soldiers up to this point in the war. (That, at least, is what my research on the subject suggests.) While Germany had indeed invaded France, its troops believed that they were simply preempting an inevitable French invasion of Germany. The British willingness to use artillery to destroy occupied French villages in the Somme seemed barbaric to the Germans, who saw themselves as defending those villages and their people. (That said, German shells also damaged French villages just as badly on many occasions when villages lay on the front between the lines of battle.) By late 1916, however, morale began to fall as many German soldiers dispiritedly started to revise their understanding that their role in the war was truly defensive, as the German High Command made its more aggressive aims clear.

6\. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and King George V of England were first cousins. Both were the grandsons of Queen Victoria of England: King George was the son of Queen Victoria's son King Edward VII; Kaiser Wilhelm was the son of her daughter Princess Victoria.

7\. The Christmas Truce of 1914: this is a fairly famous incident from the World War I. It happened spontaneously and piecemeal in a number of places along the western front where cold and miserable young men on both sides momentarily put aside the national grievances that had brought them into the conflict. It did not occur everywhere: at least one German and two British soldiers were killed in combat that Christmas Day and some 250 others died, though many from previous wounds. The fraternization was generally disapproved by higher ranking officers for the reasons I have Schultz outline. In some places there was no more than a few hours' truce to recover the dead from No Man's Land; in others true camaraderie broke out as men from both sides shared and traded food, cigarettes, and personal mementoes, showed each other photographs from home, even in one case gave haircuts. Rumors of football (soccer) matches organized between the two sides in No Man's Land persist, although most likely there were very few of them, if any. Historians seem divided on this question: some primary sources suggest that some games were played, but some of those sources were composed after the war. The sources are British; German documentation is difficult to fine. Also, while some units may have kicked some make-shift balls around and perhaps even tried for a real game, in most places No Man's Land was already not suitable for a real match, given the shell holes and unexploded ordinance, even if in 1914 the landscape was not yet as badly damaged as it became the next year.

Christmas truces were much rarer in the later years of the war. Though there were sporadic localized truces in 1915, reflecting a live-and-let-live attitude among the soldiers, Allied Headquarters had issued specific orders against fraternization and even required artillery barrages to discourage communication across No Man's Land. By 1916 most soldiers were no longer interested after so many more of their comrades had died, horrendous new weapons (gas, flamethrowers, etc.) had been used against them, and civilians at home had died in Zeppelin bombings and attacks on ships like the _Lusitania_. In other words, the soldiers of 1914 hadn't yet learned to hate each other as they later would in the midst of the atrocities of an industrialized war. Thus, the 1914 Christmas truce represents a short and very temporary space of possible fraternization that was ruthlessly quashed in later years: a romantic mythologizing of the possibility of peace in the midst of the horrors of war.

8\. One of the oddest discoveries I made was that mustaches were required for all members of the British services from the Crimean War (1853-56) until October of 1916, when the regulation was abolished. Photographic evidence suggests that this particular regulation was often ignored during the first two years of World War I, however, though also widely honored. I haven't been able to discover if the German military required them, but photographs of soldiers suggest that some wore them while others were clean shaven.

9\. Captain Fisher as an Old Etonian: There is a famous, almost certainly apocryphal quotation from the Duke of Wellington in the early nineteenth cenrtury: "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." This idea would have been much in the minds of the junior British officers in World War I. They were largely drawn from graduates of British public schools (which, by the way, are actually quite expensive private high schools). Eton College, one of the most famous and elite public schools, had 5,619 "Old Boys" (i.e. alumni) that served in the United Kingdom's armed forces. 1031 of them died, more than a fifth, nearly double the general mortality rate in the British army during the war. This casualty rate generally held across the lower officer ranks, especially the lieutenants: they were the ones who led the men "over the top" in charges toward the enemy and thus were often the first ones killed. Being young and socially privileged meant they were twice as likely to die.

10\. How I'm handling language: German spoken by Germans to Germans is usually represented as ordinary English in plain type, though I've added in italics some actual German vocabulary for cultural flavor. I have put actual German words spoken as German to the English Captain Fisher in italics. Spoken English is also italicized as a sign that it is foreign to Schultz. I've tried to be consistent along these lines, but it was complicated. I hope the system makes sense to readers.

Translations of German words and phrases:

 _Niemandsland_ _:_ No Man's Land

 _Landser:_ the nickname for a German soldier in World War I, the equivalent of "Tommy Atkins" (often shortened to "Tommy," plural "Tommies") for British soldiers, or _poilu_ for French soldiers, or "doughboys" for American soldiers later in the war.

 _Weihnachtsbaum_ _:_ Christmas tree

 _Eins . . . zwei . . . drei_ _:_ one, two, three

 _Hände hoch_ _:_ hands up

German rank equivalents:

 _Musketier_ : musketeer (yes, like the famous three!): the lowest rank of service in the German Imperial army. I've seen it frequently on pictures of World War I memorials as a common rank of German soldiers that were killed in action.

 _Gefreiter_ : private, first class

 _Unteroffizer_ _:_ corporal

 _Leutnant_ _:_ second lieutenant

 _Oberleutnant_ : first lieutenant

 _Hauptmann_ : captain


	3. Chapter 3: Hogan

_Author's Note: I strongly disapprove of corporal punishment on principle. Historically speaking, however, children in the early twentieth century, especially boys, were subject to it, and this chapter does begin with references to it._

 _For those who have read the other stories in my "Conversations" series about Hogan's family life, this chapter fits in with them. It is not, however, necessary to have read any of those stories to understand this one, which predates the rest of the series by about twenty-five years. If you are interested in that series, my author's page lists the "Conversations" stories by title in their chronological order._

ooOoo

 _September 20, 1916_

Rob buried his head further into his pillow at the knock on his door. He wasn't ready to see his father yet, and certainly not anyone else in the family. He heard the door open anyway and screwed his eyes shut more tightly. Go away, he thought fiercely. Footsteps moved across the room, came to a halt next to his bed. He heard a sigh heaved . . . he didn't think it was Dad.

"Budge over, Robbie," his older brother Jack said.

"Leave me alone," he answered, hoping his voice didn't quiver.

"C'mon, make room for me." Jack's voice was gentle, and Rob couldn't resist it. He shifted over slightly, tightening his lips so as not to make any noise.

He felt Jack's hand touch his back gently and begin to rub soothing circles. He relaxed slightly into the offered comfort but kept his face buried in the pillow. He didn't want Jack to see his face, still wet with tears.

Jack kept quiet for a while, just lightly rubbing his back. "I'm sorry you got in trouble," he finally offered.

Rob clenched his jaw as well as fisting his pillow, but he didn't reply for a moment. Then it burst out of him, though it was muffled by the pillow, "You _know_ Mr. Anthony's a bully. He's not fair, and he's just awful to Hank."

"Yeah, I know you said so."

"But you think I was wrong."

"Your feelings are in the right place, Robbie. But you're going to have to learn that there are some lines you can't cross. Dad's a lawyer, and he's going to uphold the law—or the school rules. You can't openly sass a teacher that way and get away with it."

Rob started to pull away from the pillow, remembered how he looked, and stuffed his head back into it.

"It's okay to be upset after a whipping, Robbie," his brother said softly, moving his hand up to squeeze his youngest brother's shoulder. "I always cried too. Partly because it hurt, but mostly because I knew I'd disappointed Dad so much."

Rob bit his lip. In truth, he knew his father disliked corporal punishment, used it only rarely on his sons, and even then was not severe. But his brother was right: it was the feeling of disgrace and their father's deep disappointment in him that burned the worst by far. But the problem now was that his ordeal wasn't completely over.

He turned his head toward the wall, away from his brother still, but so he could speak clearly. "I'm not sorry. He's going to expect me to apologize to Mr. Anthony, but I'm not sorry. I'm not."

"Then don't say you are." Jack's hand ruffled the hair on the back of his head. "Say, 'I apologize.' That will do."

Rob lay there quietly, thinking that over. "Doesn't it mean the same thing?"

"Well, you can acknowledge having done something that Dad had to punish you for, take responsibility for an action that you knew was against the rules. You're not saying that you're completely sorry for the result."

"Won't Dad know the difference?"

"Oh yes, he'll know," Jack laughed ruefully. "But he'll take it."

Rob bit his lip, then he sat up. Jack offered him a handkerchief, which Rob took and blew his nose into. He dropped it onto the small side table by his bed.

"Bit better now?" Jack asked, and Rob nodded, wrapping his arms around himself tightly.

"I just . . . I just hate how Mr. Anthony treats Hank. He's so mean, making him recite out loud the way he does, when he knows he's so shy and it makes his stutter worse."

"Maybe Mr. Anthony thinks it will help Hank get over being shy if he practices reading out loud," Jack suggested.

Rob glared up at his older brother. "Oh right. That's what imitating Hank's stutter in front of everyone and then making fun of him is for. He whacks that stupid pointer down across his desk when Hank makes mistakes and makes Hank jump a foot every time he makes a mistake. And he calls Hank stupid in front of _everyone_ too, but he's not! Hank's as smart as anyone. He just can't talk fast."

Jack's brows contracted. "How often does he do this?"

"Every time we have reading! So in English and geography and everything. So nearly every day. Mr. Anthony always calls on Hank first to stand up, whacks his desk with that pointer, makes us all jump and scares Hank half to death, then orders him to read out loud. He's so jangled up by then he just can't do it! Sometimes Mr. Anthony makes him read the same line over and over, saying Hank has to until he does it without a stutter! But he can't! So I don't care even if Dad thinks I was wrong," Rob said defiantly. "Mr. Anthony deserves a lot worse than just having his pointer sawed to breaking point. I wish I'd taken apart his whole desk!"

"Going after the pointer was an original idea for a prank on the teacher," Jack admitted. "Too bad you still had the saw in your school bag. That gave you away. You ignored the primary rule of pranksters, Robbie."

"What's that?"

Jack grinned broadly. "Don't get caught."

ooOoo

 _September 25, 1916_

Rob sat in the small hard chair in the principal's office that was reserved for malefactors, trying not to look nervous as he listened to Mr. Lockwood outline the charges against him to his father. John Hogan was listening intently, clearly not at all amused at having been called from work to come to school to deal with his youngest son.

"And you can just imagine the effects of having his entire desk collapse in front of him! Mr. Anthony had to go home for the rest of the day in a nervous condition." Mr. Lockwood's voice quivered with outrage. "Not to mention the cost of the desk! We cannot put up with such destructive behavior."

"Yes, I do understand that," John Hogan answered, his own voice suggesting that he was doing his best to keep his temper in check.

"Young Robert seems to be developing into a far worse case than his oldest brother ever was!"

John's frown deepened. Rob didn't think that it was at the memory of Jack's old pranks, though. His father finally spoke.

"I have listened to all you have to say, Mr. Lockwood. I think it's time I heard Rob's side of the story." He turned to face his son. "Robert, did you unscrew all the screws in Mr. Anthony's desk, causing it to collapse?"

"No, sir." Rob's denial was quick and profound.

John studied his son. "Did you unscrew _some_ of the screws in Mr. Anthony's desk, with help from some friends?"

"No, sir. I never touched Mr. Anthony's desk," Rob answered, looking his father directly in the eye.

John gave his son another long searching look. Rob held his gaze guilelessly. Then he turned to the principal. "You'll have to look elsewhere for your culprit, Mr. Anthony. Rob didn't do it."

Mr. Lockwood spluttered. "Of course he did it! He's lying to you."

"I know my son," John answered sharply. "He's telling the truth."

"He's just gotten better at lying to you," Lockwood rejoined with asperity.

"He doesn't lie to me," John retorted. "He told me the truth about sawing that pointer so that it would break, even though he knew I'd punish him for it." His mouth was a grim straight line across his face as he finished.

"So the boy knows now that he needs to lie to avoid being punished!"

"He's not lying. He's never been able to look me in the eye and lie."

"Mr. Hogan, I know this is difficult for you, but you need to accept that your son is a troublemaker."

"Oh, I already know that quite well," John replied drily. "But you haven't offered a shred of evidence that Rob was the one who caused this particular trouble. You're simply assuming he did it because of his one previous misdemeanor."

"Mr. Anthony said he was the ringleader of the classroom, laughing the loudest."

Rob spoke up at that in self-defense. "We all laughed—every single one of us. Of course I thought it was funny! Everyone did! And besides, no one likes Mr. Anthony, given the way he bullies Hank every day for stuttering, so when the desk fell apart so suddenly, right when he whacked it with the pointer like he does every morning to make Hank jump, everyone thought he deserved it."

Mr. Lockwood frowned. John Hogan eyed his son with disfavor at this editorializing, and Rob subsided.

"It sounds to me like there are other issues in that classroom that would bear investigation," John continued, fixing Mr. Lockwood with a severe look. "But that is your professional concern, not mine. As far as the destruction of the desk, quite frankly I don't see how Rob could have done it, physically speaking. I assume that desk was something like this one?" He touched the principal's desk lightly.

"Not as large," Lockwood answered slowly, "but from the same company, yes. The school district got a deal from them about a decade ago, to furnish all the classrooms and administrative offices."

"Well, a fifth-grade boy, even a strong one, doesn't have the wrist strength to turn all these screws to loosen them the way that would be needed. That would require muscle power that Rob just doesn't have." He paused, then added, "Plus, you said it had to have been done Friday evening, but Rob's time is accounted for that night: he was at the baseball game with his brothers. They gave a complete account of the game when they got home, and I'm sure they can summon dozens of witnesses. Rob has truthfully said he didn't do it, and the facts are that he couldn't have done it. And that, sir, concludes our business." John Hogan rose to his feet, followed by Rob. Mr. Lockwood stood also, still spluttering with outrage.

"This has to be paid for! I'm going to suspend him!"

"If you do," John Hogan replied coolly, "I'll be taking it to the school board. You don't have the evidence to convict him on this. Rob will be in class tomorrow, as usual, and I will expect him to comport himself with integrity, whether with a substitute teacher or Mr. Anthony, if he feels well enough to return to class. Now, sir, I wish you a good afternoon." He turned on his heel and left, and Rob trotted after him, not daring to look up at the seething principal.

The two of them left the elementary school and turned right when they reached the main sidewalk, heading for home six blocks away. Rob walked beside his father, silent, somewhat awed by his father's defense of him. He was very accustomed to his father's legalistic interrogations when he had misbehaved, as his father determined his guilt, but he had never seen his father acting essentially as a defense counsel before.

"Rob, you know what an accessory is?" his father abruptly asked him when they were a block from home.

"Someone who helps someone do something wrong?" Rob answered, worried abruptly about where his father's inquiry was going.

"That's right." John Hogan stopped and put his hand on his son's shoulder, looking down at him. "You said you didn't touch Mr. Anthony's desk, right?"

Rob looked up at his father. "Yes, sir, that's right."

"Did you help with disassembling it?"

"No, Dad, I didn't." Rob's voice was utterly sincere.

"Do you know who did it?"

Rob looked down and away. His father sighed.

"Who did you put up to doing it for you?"

"No one!" Rob looked back up at his father. "I didn't ask anyone to do it or suggest it to anyone, Dad. Honest."

"Oh, I'm sure you're telling the truth—but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth," his father said with another sigh. He cupped his son's chin gently. "Omission is still a kind of lying, Rob."

Rob swallowed hard in the face of his father's disapproval. "I didn't help or ask anyone to do it, Dad. Yes, I knew about it," he admitted slowly, then finished in a rush, "but I promised not to tell. And I don't care! Mr. Anthony has bullied Hank all year. He's awful. He deserved to know how he makes others feel," he said, his voice growing thick near the end.

"I don't approve of vigilante justice," his father replied sternly. "We have rules and laws to deal with problems in our society."

"But what if the people who should pay attention don't do it? Then what else is there to do? Who's supposed to stand up for the ones who can't stand up for themselves?" Rob's eyes watered, but he held back the tears, clenching his jaw to stop his lips from trembling.

His father's hand slid around from his chin to tousle his hair. "So you see yourself as a kind of Robin Hood?"

Rob shrugged, then nodded a little bit. "I think Robin Hood is a good guy."

"Hmmm. I suppose Robin Hood's heart was in the right place, even if his methods were extra-legal," his father admitted. He draped his arm across Rob's shoulder, pulling his son in close for a one-armed hug, then turned for home once again. "I suppose your mother will be pleased to have me home early, even if you're coming in late, eh?"

Arriving home, they found Jack sitting on the porch, reading a red-covered novel. He looked up at them as they approached, John Hogan's arm still across Rob's shoulders, then he stood up to greet them. "Hi, Dad; hi, Rob." He raised his left eyebrow slightly. "You're home early, Dad."

"That's what happens when I get called to the elementary school because Rob is accused of taking a teacher's desk apart," their father said, eyes on his oldest son.

Both of Jack's eyebrows went up. "That sounds like an awful big job for a little kid his age."

"Yes, that's just what I thought." John Hogan shook his head. "It seems it happened Friday night, probably during the baseball game you took him to."

"It was a great game," Rob broke in. "We saw Bill Bowen make the winning out with a double play!"

"Yes, I'm sure you did. I do wonder how much of the rest of the game you two boys saw, though. It's easy to be seen in a crowd early on and then again at the end. And the baseball field is right behind the elementary school."

Jack raised his chin slightly, but said nothing as he looked his father in the eye.

Both of them waited quietly for the other to speak.

John Hogan broke the silence first. "I'm going to go see if I can give your mother a hand getting dinner ready. It would be a good idea for the two of you to do that too. And after dinner I think I can find some extra yard work that needs doing that might be too much work for Rob by himself but that he can handle just fine with the help of an older brother."

"I'm always glad to help out with the yard, Dad," Jack answered. "You know that."

"Yes, I can see you like giving a helping hand. I'll be thinking to find some other ways for you to help out too over the next couple of weeks." John Hogan shook his head slightly, apparently amused, then climbed the stairs and went into the house, closing the door behind him.

Rob looked up at his older brother. "You were waiting out here for us. You going to tell him you did it, weren't you?"

"Only if I had to—if you were in trouble, or if he asked me straight out." Jack ruffled Rob's hair, much as their father had done earlier. "I wouldn't have let you take the blame."

"But Dad knew anyway. Why do you think he let us off?"

"We'll see if you think he's 'let us off' by the time we get through all the chores he's going to come up with for us to do."

"So does this mean that we broke the primary rule of pranksters?" Rob asked anxiously.

Jack pursed his lips judiciously. "I'd say not. We weren't really caught, only figured out, and only by Dad—he knows us too well." He looked down at his little brother. "Any idea why he just dropped the subject?"

"He started talking about Robin Hood," Rob answered, still puzzled.

"Ah," said Jack, picking up the old book with its well-worn red cover from the steps of the porch, a still-loved relic from a previous generation. "Then I suppose even a lawyer can feel some affection for an outlaw."

 _Fin_

ooOoo

 _Author's Note: This chapter finishes this small series of short stories, all set on one day a hundred years ago, one for each of the three main characters of Hogan's Heroes that would have been alive and old enough to be affected by the events of 1916. Klink and Schultz were caught up as soldiers in the war, of course, whereas Hogan would have been just a boy living in a country that had not yet entered the war. I thought it would be interesting to explore how that one day might have affected the men they had become when the series started. I hope you enjoyed it, and that you have a healthy happy New Year in 2017._

 _I have loved_ _Hogan's Heroes_ _since the 1970s, but none of its characters are mine; they were created by Bernard Fein and Albert S. Ruddy. I acknowledge their ownership and that of Bing Crosby Productions and intend no copyright infringement. At no point will I or others profit monetarily on this story._


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